How To: Tea-Dyed Tags

1. Brew a pot of strong tea. You can cool it or use it hot. Hotter tends to dye the cardstock darker, but it also breaks the paper down a bit more. If you are going for aged and distressed though, that’s not a bad thing. 🙂

2. Cut cardstock to the desired size of your tags.

3. Pour tea into a bowl and slip the tags into it, making sure they don’t stick together at first.

4. I add the teabags into the bowl as well if I’m going for a blotchy, uneven aged appearance on the tags.

5. When the tags have reached the color you want, carefully remove from the tea and place in a single layer on a pan or cooling rack. You can let them air dry or place in a barely warm oven just until dry. I’ve found that the tags curl up a little more in the oven, but I like that. 🙂

6. Here’s a picture of the died tags with a couple that haven’t been died.

7. Stamp with desired images, punch holes, and string with twine or ribbon.

8. Try different types of teas for different colors! I’ve used different herbal teas to get aged pastels.

9. Use as a scrapbooking embellishment or gift tag. Here I’ve used one on a gift bag using the beautiful May SNS kit and hand-crinkled seam binding!